THE ENGADINE 

AND 

ST. GOTTHARD RAILWAY 

THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 




UNDERWOOD AND UNDERWOOD 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 



THE ENGADINE 

AND 

ST. GOTTHARD RAILWAY 



A PART OF UNDERWOOD AND UNDERWOOD'S 
STEREOSCOPIC TOUR THROUGH 
SWITZERLAND 



PERSONALLY CONDUCTED BY 

M. S. EMERY 

AUTHOR OF "RUSSIA THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE, ' 
AND " HOW TO ENJOY PICTURES " 



-o** ray 



UNDERWOOD AND UNDERWOOD 

NEW YORK OTTAWA, KAS. 

LONDON TORONTO, CAN. 



ffhfftlBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

"fxVO COHE8 Recsiveo 

SEP. 3 1902 

^CnWntOHT ENTRY 

0»-,flS3 duXXc. No. 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1902 
By UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD 
New York and London 
(Entered at Stationers' Hall) 



Stereographs copyrighted in the United States 
and foreign countries 



Map System 
Patented in the United States, August 2t, 1900 

Patented in Great Britain, March 22, 1900 
Patented in France, March 26, 1900. S. G. D. G. 
Switzerland, + Patent Nr. 21,211 
Patents applied for in other countries 



... » All rights reserved 



THE ENGADINE 



THE ENGADINE 



We move on now toward the eastern part of Swit- 
zerland. Look at the general map (No. 1) and yon will 
find a section marked off by a rectangle in the extreme 
east, a part of the canton of Grisons just above the Italian 
line. This section yon have again, enlarged by itself, as 
Map No. 6. Open now, Map No. 6, a map of the Upper 
Engadine and Bernina group, where the details of the 
country can be traced to better advantage. You see this 
region, being so near the Italian frontier, partakes to quite 
an extent of the character of an Italian district. Most of 
the mountain names and river names are Italian in form. 

Our first outlook in this particular section is marked 39 
upon this map. You will find it a little south of the cen- 
tral portion. The radiating lines show that we shall be 
looking a little east of south, that we shall look down from 
a height over a glacier, or rather over the junction of two 
glaciers which sweep off toward our left. There will evi- 
dently be a height rising before us separating the two 
glaciers, and several heights in the distance. The Bernina 
peak we shall expect to see at our left and the Eoseg 
farther to the right. Now turn to the stereograph itself 
and let us see how these anticipations are realized. 
130 



THE BERNINA AND THE ROSEG 



131 



39. Nature's Cathedrals, Viz Bemina and Hoseg, 
Hoseg Valley, Engadine 

It all is just as we knew it would be, — the main features 
of the place related to each other precisely as the map 
predicted. That is the Bernina of course, — the huge 
mass at the left, partly rock ridges and partly volumes of 
snow and ice. It is about five miles away from where we 
stand now. The darker mountain between us and the 
Bernina is the Tschierva, and the Roseg is that rounded 
mountain straight before us, with the many jagged peaks 
separated by snow ridges. The boundary line of Italy is, 
you remember, on the farther side of these very moun- 
tains. It hardly seems possible that a land which we 
think of as the home of perpetual summer can be so near 
these fields of ice and snow, but the slope towards the 
Mediterranean brings one of the most sudden changes in 
climate to be found in all Europe. For centuries these 
mountains were regarded as practically impregnable. 
There were a few feasible passes between the extreme 
heights of this range, making routes across and down into 
Italy; but tne summits themselves were never climbed 
until about fifty years ago. The first ascent of the Ber- 
nina yonder was made by a Swiss in 1850. Since then 
several successful attempts have been made to reach the 
summit, sometimes by Englishmen (the English members 
of the Alpine Club have been among the most enthusias- 
tic mountain-climbers in Swiss history), sometimes by 
Italians, sometimes by French, Americans and the native 



132 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

Swiss. The Koseg was never climbed until 1865. Al- 
though it is not so high as the Bernina, the ascent is un- 
usually difficult by reason of certain sharp ridges which 
are exceedingly dangerous to pass. The route usually 
taken by travellers is up this side to that first p} r ramidal 
shoulder, then along the ridge extending from that 
nearer pyramid toward the rough rock dome beyond. 

Forty years ago there were bears on the lower slopes 
of the Koseg, but those animals, which used to be so com- 
mon in Switzerland centuries ago, are now practically 
extinct in these regions. Indeed the chamois themselves, 
whose chase used to give a large number of native Swiss 
their distinctive profession and means of livelihood, are 
becoming fewer and fewer. A few years ago one of the 
chamois hunters of this neighborhood, crossing a glacier 
on the Koseg, fell into a deep crevasse and escaped in a 
way similar to that of a man down in the Unter Grindel- 
wald. He was so fortunate as to fall completely through 
the great crevasse and come out underneath the surface 
of the glacier by following the course of one of the 
streams which carried off the melting ice. 

Though there is no danger from bears or other wild 
beasts in climbing the mountains about here, the perils of 
the mountains themselves are a very serious thing to 
reckon with. Then, besides the momentary possibility of 
a fatal accident, there are all sorts of minor inconveniences 
to which a would-be mountaineer has to become accus- 
tomed until he can make little of them. One is what they 
call the " mountain sickness." The guides differ in their 



MOUNTAIN CLIMBING 



133 



explanation of the cause of it. The symptoms are partly 
like those of sea-sickness and partly like those of a condi- 
tion of sheer exhaustion. The rareflcation of the air on 
these great heights has more to do with it than anything 
else^ although the weariness caused by climbing has prob- 
ably also a good deal to do with it. As the air grows more 
and more rare it is natural to breath more and more 
rapidly in order to supply the lungs with sufficient oxygen, 
and the tendency is to keep the mouth too much open and 
exposed. This naturally dries the throat and causes a 
very distressing thirst, all the more distressing because, 
of course, ice and snow are a very poor means of satisfying 
it, and the amount of desirable drink which can be carried 
on a climbing excursion is naturally limited. Besides 
these inconveniences, the daring ones who climb such 
heights as these just ahead of us must expect to have nose- 
bleed caused by the rarefying of the air and the unbal- 
anced pressure of the blood in the body. On the whole, 
if we sit here on the rock with our Swiss friend, we lose 
the excitement and glory of the climbing, but we also lose 
a good many uncomfortable experiences that belong with 
the climbing. Let us be content this time with the more 
commonplace experience of looking at the mountains from 
this modest height. 

The experience is commonplace only by comparison 
with the fascinations of an actual ascent. Indeed, as we 
look out upon these giant slopes it hardly seems as if we 
could ask for anything more in the way of inspiration and 
uplift than we get from the pure sense of vision. It 



134 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

seems very strange that people should for so many cen- 
turies have thought of mountain heights like these as 
merely dead and barren wastes, places of horror and dread; 
but so it was until people began to understand nature 
toward the close of the eighteenth century. You remem- 
ber how it was when Wordsworth and Coleridge and the 
other lake poets in England, and when Eousseau in 
France, began to tell the rest of the world what the uni- 
verse all around them meant. Coleridge's masterpiece, 
you know, was inspired by Mont Blanc. 

How beautiful those pines are, outlined against the 
glacier in the valley! That species of pine, — the arolla, — 
is common over all this part of Switzerland although in 
some districts the deciduous larch appears to be coming 
up to take its place. The timber of the arolla pine is very 
generally used all through Switzerland for house building 
and the minor purposes of domestic cabinet-making, and 
it is also an admirable fuel. Until quite recent years, 
when modern conveniences have distributed themselves 
pretty generally through even remote country districts, it 
was not uncommon for splinters of this resinous wood to 
be lighted and used for candles in country households. 
Now electric lights are following the telephone. 

One more look at that sweeping ice-river before us. 
You see those ridges of debris which mark the sides and 
the middle of the stream? Eidges like those (they are 
what the geologists call u moraines ") are traceable for 
centuries after a glacier itself has disappeared, and in our 
own country very often testify to the existence of glaciers 



THE MORTERATSCH GLACIER 



135 



ages ago, in regions which have long been occupied by 
fertile fields under sunny skies. 

We will turn back now over this grassy hill where the 
Alpine flowers are thick among the grass blades, and make 
a journey towards the east to look at the other side of the 
peak of the Bernina. Consult Map No. 6 once more and 
you will find at the right of our present standpoint an- 
other marked 40j from which the outlook is indicated as 
toward the southwest. There, you see, we may expect to 
find glacier streams again near us; — one sweeping away 
toward the right out of our range of vision, and the other 
coming down nearer our standpoint. In the distance, ac- 
cording to the map, we shall see the Bernina at our right; 
the Bella Vista towards the left and various dark ridges of 
rock standing out from the masses of snow and ice which 
almost fill the field of view. 

40. Eella b Vista, Piz Bernina and the Morteratsch 
Glacier, Engadine 

We are still looking towards sunny Italy, though here 
the sunshine seems only to light up the coldness of the ice 
and to give little suggestion of summer's beauty. These 
trees near us are pines of the same species as those that we 
recently saw. It is the Morteratsch Glacier which runs 
off to the right beyond the pines. You remember the 
map showed it as extending for several miles almost 
directly north down the valley. There is a local tradition 
that a good many years ago a shepherd and a dairy-maid 
who were in love with each other used to meet on a pas- 



136 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

ture hillside down in the valley just before us, a part of 
the valley now occupied by ice. The course of true love 
did not run smooth; the parents of the maiden objected 
to the match; the lover went off to war, the sweetheart 
married a man not of her choice and then died, but her 
ghost used to come back day after day and see to things 
in the Alpine dairy where she had spent so many happy 
years working and anticipating the visits of her lover. The 
herdsmen used to pay great respect to the sad ghost, tak- 
ing pains not to intrude upon it; but, after a time, when 
new men came to have charge of the cows in the pasture, 
the same consideration was not shown. The dairy-maid's 
ghost disappeared, and when it went away good luck went 
away also; the cows dried, the grass in the pasture failed, 
the glacier advanced farther and farther, till at last it 
quite covered the hillside and buried the scene of the old- 
time love-making under masses of solid ice. 

Do you remember, as you look toward these mountains, 
how much they have meant in their bearing on the des- 
tinies of Europe, and, in fact, the destinies of the 
whole world? The fact that this practically impas- 
sable mountain wall stood at the north of Italy 
limited the reach of Soman power, holding it to the 
Mediterranean shores and the regions beyond the Mediter- 
ranean. It is true, of course, that the power of Eome 
did reach out here and there toward the north, but on the 
whole this mountain wall which we look at now, separat- 
ing the Latin peoples from the Germanic peoples, kept the 
civilization of the one apart from the life of the other 



THE BEBNINA BANGE 



137 



until the time came when Kome was in its decadence and 
the barbarians were the stronger race. 

Perhaps it seems a far-fetched reflection to consider 
that Luther's religion and Goethe's poetry and the music 
of Handel, Mozart and Wagner would probably never have 
had their present part in our lives but for the fact that 
these mountains stood where they stand; yet is it not 
true? 

Map No. 6 shows another desirable point of view a mile 
south of our present stand. It is marked 41 and indicates 
that we shall look almost exactly south from the Diavo- 
lezza Pass. Look carefully at the map and forecast once 
more the general disposition of the rock- and snow-masses 
at which we are going to look. You see the peak of the 
Cambrena will be somewhat beyond the range of our 
vision on our left, the peaks of Palu will be in the distance 
before us, with three parallel ridges of dark rock extend- 
ing out of the glacier, curving around towards the right 
below our feet. 

41. Teaks of Palu, wrapped in Eternal Snows, 
Bernina Group, Engadine 

It is between two and three miles across to the heights 
just opposite where we stand, although it looks to be a 
much shorter distance. Again, the simplicity of these 
great masses of rock and snow deceives us with regard to 
their dimensions. It seems as if those might be only snow 
drifts a little larger than the ordinary, covering ledges a 
little higher than the ordinary; but remembering what we 



138 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

have already seen we can readily believe the truth about 
them, which is that the snow ridges which look twenty 
feet high may easily be one hundred feet high instead, and 
the rock ridges which look to be fifty or sixty feet across 
may mean cliffs five or six hundred feet high piled up one 
section above another, impassable or all but impassable by 
reason of their coating of ice and the extreme steepness of 
the angles at which they rise. Mountain-climbers declare 
that the only way to obtain an experimental faith in the 
size of mountains is to climb them. A little black knob, 
as we here consider it, may mean a cliff a hundred feet 
high; a bluish streak of light may be the mouth of a 
yawning crevasse; the streaked surface of a rock which 
looks as if it were ruled by a pencil may stand for the 
furrowed path of an enormous avalanche. A practiced 
mountaineer measures the size of mountains, after all, not 
so much by the way they look or by abstract feet, but by 
his memory of hours of muscular exertion. He counts 
the steepness of a mountain not by degrees as a surveyor 
does, but by his memory of how it felt to climb the slope 
of ice or snow rising in an almost vertical line above his 
head. 

Just see the shadows cast by the eastern sun. It would 
be a magnificent sight to view a sunrise from the top of 
one of these peaks. They say that on a clear morning the 
first coloring of the sky is often a deep purplish blue; the 
neighboring mountain peaks light up one by one, catching 
the gleam of the sun long before any light has reached the 
valleys or the ordinary levels of the earth. People who 



ON MOUNTAIN HEIGHTS 



139 



have done much mountain-climbing say that the experi- 
ence curiously reverses the ordinary way of regarding 
mountains and valleys. We who stay down on the lower 
levels measure everything from the standpoint of the 
levels, thinking of the mountains as exceptions to a rule. 
When you look down from a mountain peak, so the moun- 
taineers tell us, everything shows itself in relations the 
reverse of this. The mountains seem to be the real things. 
They form the standpoint by which to measure everything 
else. The valleys are only spaces between them. 

It would seem as if these guides who spend so much 
time upon great heights with enormous outlooks ought to 
develop a fine philosophy of life and of the world. Some 
of them do. After all it depends more on the individual 
than on the nature and circumstances of his daily work. 
Whymper, the English mountain-climber, who has written 
such interesting books about his experiences, speaks of 
his acquaintance with certain guides to whom the experi- 
ence of climbing great heights was actually an inspiration. 
One man in particular with whom he did a good deal of 
climbing, — a poor little fellow who was not actually a pro- 
fessional guide but only a porter carrying burdens to help 
out the cleverer men, — used to feel an actual religious 
rapture in the presence of great heights and vast solitudes. 
He was like the lonely Scotchman whom Mr. Hamilton 
Mabie met away up in the Highlands. The man stood at 
a little distance with head bared and bowed, and Mr. 
Mabie, as the story goes, hesitated for a moment to ap- 
proach him, explaining afterwards: "I thought that you 



±40 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

were at your devotions." " Oh," said the Scotchman, " I 
was only taking off my cap to the beauty of the world." 

All this time there are most enchanting spots all around 
us and behind us; especially off here at our right there is 
a region which we must not miss seeing, — the heart of the 
Upper Engadine, about the lakes. Map No. 6 shows the 
region in question near the centre of the district that is 
given on this special sheet, extending from southwest to 
northeast. The whole valley in which the lakes lie is at a 
very high level; but, high as it is, it is surrounded by 
mountains still higher. We will go up to a summit where 
you see the spot marked 42 and look almost directly north 
over the little lake called the Hahnensee, and down still 
farther over the town of St. Moritz and another lake which 
lies beside the town. It would be a good plan right here 
to refer once more to the general map of Switzerland, 
Map No. 1, finding the section of the Engadine over in the 
eastern part of the country and noticing what there is to 
the north of the Hahnensee and St. Moritz. We shall be 
looking, you observe, across the eastern end of Switzer- 
land, over a part of the canton of Grisons, towards the end 
of Lake Constance. Wurtemburg lies still farther to the 
north. The Bernese Alps will be off at our left, — the 
Oberland through which we have been journeying and 
where we have looked out upon the Wetterhorn and the 
Schreckhorn, the Jungfrau, the Eiger and the Monch. 



LIFE IN THE ENGADINE 



141 



4:2. Upper Engadine, northeast from the Hahnensee 

Is it not an enchanting outlook? This is the Hahnen- 
see, the little lake just below us, and the farther lake is 
that of St. Moritz, with the town over there on the 
western shore. St. Moritz itself is as high above the sea 
level as the summit of the Eigi near Lucerne (Stereograph 
6) although it lies in a valley. The valley runs from 
southwest to northeast, and, what with the dryness of the 
air on account of the height, and its warmth on account 
of the exposure to southern sunshine, the valley is a 
favorite winter resort for invalids from all over the world. 
And the air is not the only medicinal agency at hand. 
There are mineral springs down in St. Moritz which have 
been known for centuries; in fact, as far back as 1539 
Paracelsus praised the virtues of the mineral waters here, 
and for fully four hundred years pilgrims have come to 
St. Moritz in search of health and strength. The waters 
are charged with iron, carbonates of lime, magnesia and 
sulphate of soda. People drink them and bathe in them 
besides, according to the orders of physicians, and their 
virtues are highly praised by the doctors of to-day. 

This lovely mountain country is a region of greater 
prosperity than are many of the other mountain valleys 
of Switzerland. A great many of the natives of the Enga- 
dine go away from home for a term of years, making little 
fortunes in Paris and Vienna, Frankfort and Dresden and 
Berlin, and then come back to settle down on modest 
incomes for the rest of their lives. There is less poverty 



142 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 



here than in most parts of Switzerland, and of course the 
great influx of visitors in summer, together with the pres- 
ence of a large number even in winter, provides a steady 
income for those of the people who are engaged in the 
business of keeping hotels and pensions. This is conse- 
quently one of the bits of earthly paradise where there are 
comparatively few reminders of the troubles born of 
grinding poverty. 

Beautiful as the view is, looking in this direction towards 
the Tyrol and Southern Germany, the outlook towards the 
south in the direction of Italy, directly behind us on our 
left, is, if possible, even lovelier. If we turn about, chang- 
ing our standpoint by only a few rods and look southwest 
over the Silzer and Silvaplana lakes we shall see a scene 
of ideal grandeur and beauty. See the lines connected 
with the number 43 on Map No. 6. 

43. The Beauty and Splendor of the Engadine, look- 
ing southwest from the Hahnensee to the Maloja 

Could anything be more beautiful than this view be- 
tween the mountain heights over these placid lakes, with 
the sunshiny sky above our heads? This lake (the two 
evidently were one not so very long ago, for the sand-bar 
dividing them shows on the very face of it that its origin 
was recent) seems just the one to have been named in our 
American Indian fashion, like Winnepesaukee in the heart 
of America's Switzerland, " the smile of the Great Spirit." 

We cannot help wondering as we look down this valley 
how long it will be that travellers will continue to have 



WINTER JOURNEYS OYER THE ALPS 



143 



this outlook over smiling sheets of water. Just below us, 
down there at the right where we see the houses of Silva- 
plana, at the end of the nearer lake, we can see how 
deposits of sand and gravel, brought down by mountain 
streams, are gradually filling in the bed of the lake and 
forcing the waters to retreat. Surely it will not be so very 
many centuries before the bed of this valley will be made 
up of green fields, and the mountain travellers of those 
days sitting on this hill will be speculating as to how the 
valley must have looked when its ancient hollows were 
filled with water! The water, by the way, is now as clear 
as crystal. People have sometimes declared it was like 
liquid air, so clearly can one distinguish pebbles and other 
details below the surface. 

On this sunny summer day it is difficult to imagine how 
the place would appear when everything is covered deep 
with winters snow, but if one wishes to help out his 
imagination in that way, Symond's account of the sleigh- 
ride which he took with his daughter in April, 1888, is 
very well worth reading.* It was at the close of a winter 
spent in Davos-am-Platze, a village twenty miles to the 
north from here, that the two undertook to come down to 
Silvaplana, and beyond through the Maloja Pass at the 
farther end of these lakes, to go down into Italy. The 
snows had been very heavy that year and in April the 
drifts were still of enormous depth. The travellers had 
to change horses many times in the course of the journey 

* A chapter in Our Home in the Swiss Highlands. John Adding- 
ton Symonds. 



144 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

and a great deal of the way the original roadways were 
entirely concealed by masses of rock avalanches, and snow 
avalanches which had fallen during the winter and early 
spring. The snow-drifts were so soft at the time of mak- 
ing the journey that the danger of further avalanches was 
very great, and, according to the custom of this country, 
the driver of the sleigh used no bells, — the vibration of 
bells has been known many a time to start the movement 
of an avalanche, causing great disaster. At one place on 
the road, not far above Silvaplana, the inn at which the 
travellers stopped for refreshment was reached by going 
down six feet below the road level, the snow-drifts having 
elevated the road to that extent. The telegraph posts, 
thirty feet high, were buried almost or entirely out of 
sight, their tips here and there projecting above the snow. 
It was a great relief to come down the last hill into the 
lighted streets of Silvaplana, down there on the edge of 
the lake, and know that the worst of the journey was over. 

The road down towards Italy, on the farther side of 
those distant mountains straight ahead, is a very steep and 
picturesque descent. It is quite a famous pass. We will 
go beyond the lakes and look at it now. The point from 
which we are to look is marked on Map No. 6 at the south- 
western extremit}^, just beyond the southwestern end of 
Silzer lake, by the red lines and the number 44. You see 
on this map the course of the highway is indicated by 
curiously crooked lines, and our standpoint is indicated as 
being on a hill just to the north of the roadway, looking 
across its curves towards the south. 



CHILDREN IN THE GRISONS 



145 



44. The Descent to Italy, Iload winding down from ] 
the Maloja Pass, Engadine 

It takes skillful engineering to build a practicable road 
down these tremendously steep slopes. See how many- 
turns the highway makes in order to render the passage 
feasible for carriages. The road-bed is kept in excellent 
condition, and, as a matter of fact, experienced drivers in 
these regions take carriages down the road at a high rate 
of speed, the horses being so sure-footed and so accus- 
tomed to the way that there are practically never serious 
accidents. 

We are still in the canton of G-risons, but so near the 
Italian line that the district is practically Italian in char- 
acter. We should very likely find Italian the tongue in 
which to talk with these children if we wished to compare 
notes with them about the delights of the sunshine, the 
flavor of the mountain strawberries and the prospects of 
good weather for to-morrow. Little folks are so used to 
mountain-climbing all about here that nobody has any 
fears for them. They take care of themselves and learn 
very quickly to keep a steady head on heights like this. 
Educational facilities are not so good in this part of Swit- 
zerland as in certain other cantons. The strongly Protes- 
tant communities pay much more attention to the quality 
of public-school instruction than do the cantons where 
the people are largely Eoman Catholic, but public schools 
of some character or other are maintained everywhere 
throughout the confederation. These little people have 
to be at their tasks a certain number of months each year, 



146 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

just as our American children do, although the range of 
study in a country district like this is naturally very 
limited. If they know anything about America, they 
probably have the idea of it which prevails through 
Europe, — that it is a land of golden promise where every- 
body can quickly become rich and great. It is a good 
thing to remember, though, in this connection, that it was 
a Swiss- American who said the most characteristically un- 
American thing which has ever been said about money- 
making. It was Louis Agassiz who replied when someone 
laid out for him a scheme of work which would bring in 
great profits, that he could not consider it; he really had 
no time to make money! 

That winding road has its fascinations! If we were to 
follow its alluring lines they would lead us down past 
Lake Como, the paradise of northern Italy, and on to the 
blue Mediterranean at Genoa. The sea is only one hun- 
dred and fifty miles away. But this time we shall turn 
our faces away from Italy, going westward toward Monte 
Eosa and the Matterhorn and the towering ice-cliffs of 
Mont Blanc. 



THE ST. GOTTHABD EAILWAY 



In this part of Switzerland some of the most remark- 
able engineering in the world has been done. 

Unless the local geography is perfectly clear in your 
memory, look once again at the General Map (No. 1). 
Forty miles west of Maloja the St, Gotthard railway 
crosses the country from north to south, on its way down 
from Lucerne to Milan. Near the railway station of 
Giornico (the place is marked by a small rectangle on the 
map) there are some wonderful achievements of engineer- 
ing, — tunnels that bore through the mountain-side in 
great circular loops. There is a special map (No. 7) which 
shows the exact curves of the line. Consult that map, 
and remember that the continuous lines mean track above 
ground, dotted lines, track in tunnels, and you can 
readily make out the progression of the road. Begin- 
ning at the Giornico station, the track bends to the right 
and plunges into the side of the mountain. Inside the 
hill it rises higher and higher, and at the same time curves 
around in the direction taken by the hands of a clock; and 
just before it reaches a point above where it entered the 
hill, it comes out again, running along the side of the hill 
for a short distance. Then it bores into the mountain 
again; again it works its way up, and at the same time 

U7 



148 SWITZEBLAND THKOUGH THE STEKEOSCOPE 



around like the hands of a clock. It comes out for breath 
and goes in again, boring up higher and higher toward 
the regions of the St. Gotthard. The lines in red with 
the number 45 show where we are to stand and what part 
of the road we are to see. 

45. Engineering Feats on the St. Gotthard Railroad,— 
'Circular Tunnels at Giornico 

One is continually impressed, here in Switzerland, by 
the engineering skill of the age we live in. Do you recog- 
nize the direction of the road after studying the special 
map? The railroad station is at our left. The track 
curving around just before us is entering the Travi Tun- 
nel, boring upward and around at the same time. As it 
completes its spiral coil it comes out away up there higher 
on the mountain side, where you see the railroad train 
bound for Lucerne. A few rods farther to the left that 
train will plunge into the second tunnel, as shown on 
the little map, proceeding in the same way, rising and 
boring higher and higher like a spiral staircase through 
the heart of the hill. 

Just think how the whole face of the world has changed 
since the barbaric hordes from the north came pouring 
down over these mountains to ravage Italy and stamp on 
the ruins of the old Eoinan Empire! A scheme like this 
tunnel would have been to those sturdy old fighters as in- 
comprehensible and fantastic as discussions of the " fourth 
dimension " seem to us to-day. 

(xo back to our general map yet again and trace the 
black line of the railroad northwestward from Giornico; 



CIECULAE TUNNELS AT GIORNICO 



149 



you come in a few miles to the famous St. Gotthard Tun- 
nel, one of the marvels of all modern railroad construc- 
tion. It is over nine miles long, through the mountain, 
and it took nine years to complete the work. Work was 
begun simultaneously at the north and south sides. 
Power from the Tessin and Reuss rivers was used to com- 
press air into one-twentieth of its normal volume, and this 
compressed air supplied force for borers, preparing holes 
for charges of dynamite. 

A few miles still farther, beyond the northerly end of the 
great St. G-otthard Tunnel, you see the station of Wasen. 
There again there are more looped and coiled tunnels, 
somewhat similar to those we have just seen at G-iornico, 
but curiously zigzag in their relative location. Special 
Map No. 8 gives the topographical details. Notice that 
this map is so printed that north is toward the right. The 
track is here descending from the St. Gotthard at the 
south, and coming gradually down northward toward Lake 
Lucerne. You can see by the map that the track runs 
some distance past Wasen, on a higher level, drops into 
the Leggistein Tunnel and moves down in an oblique coil, 
coming out of the tunnel and back toward Wasen. At 
Wasen station a north-bound train would be found head- 
ing due south! Leaving Wasen again, the track still runs 
south till it reaches the Wattinger Tunnel, another down- 
ward slanting loop, from which it emerges to run about 
north-northeast toward Fliielen, indulging in one more 
sweep underground before it decides to keep to the day- 
light. 



SEP 3 - 1903 



3 1902 



150 SWITZERLAND THROUGH THE STEREOSCOPE 

46. St. Gotthard Hailvoad at Wasen, north side of 
Alps; Windgalle in distance 

Here is a bit of the very road, contradictory enough, in 
its movements to drive a compass distracted. We are 
looking north from a point near the station (see location 
46 on the special map No. 8), but on the track at our left 
a train going in the direction in which we face would be 
bound, not for Lucerne, but for Milan! The stretch of 
track which we see at our left is at the lower end of the 
Leggistein tunnel. 

The Windgalle is that sharply pyramidal peak in the 
distance to the right. If we were on its summit we could 
easily look down on Lake Lucerne, for those blue waters 
lie in their queerly crooked hollow that we remember, just 
beyond the mountains which cut of! our northern view. 
Don't you recall just how it looks over beyond those 
mountains, — just how we saw the Uri-Eothstock towering 
opposite Sisikon (Stereograph 14) and how we looked 
down on the lake from the dizzy shelf of the Axenstrasse 
(Stereograph 15) and how we gazed from the Axenstein 
between the ranks of mountains over to where Pilatus, 
with his romantic peaks, stood on the western side 
(Stereograph 13)? Those were beautiful outlooks over 
Lucerne! 

Now we are to move westward and see the southern 
side of the Bernese Alps. 



MAP NO. 1. 




I 



SEP 3 1902 



005 3 72 336 

OUR. COMPLETE 

SWITZERLAND "TOUR." 



consists of One Hundred Original Stereo- 
scopic Photographs of the more important 
places in Switzerland, arranged in the same 
order a tourist might visit them. M. L. 
Emery acts as a personal guide in a book 
of 270 pages. In this book are also given 
Ten Maps of our new patented system, 
specially devised for the purpose of showing 
the route and definitely locating the stereo- 
graphs. Educators say that by the proper 
use of stereographs, with these maps, people 
may get genuine experiences of travel. 



THIS SECTION 

is taken in full and without alteration from 
the larger book. 



